Karin Schubert (born November 26, 1944 in Hamburg, Germany) is a German actress who enjoyed a career playing dramatic roles in the 1970s before becoming a porn star in the 1980s and 1990s.

Trained as an actress, in 1972, she achieved great success with two films: Bluebeard, directed by Edward Dmytryk, and Yves Boisset's L'Attentat (The Assassination). The same year, she appeared along with Edwige Fenech in the sex comedy Quel gran pezzo dell'Ubalda tutta nuda e tutta calda (Ubalda, All Naked and Warm). She then started to appear in adventure films, especially with Italian actor George Eastman. The first film of this kind was a Three Musketeers spaghetti Western adaptation, Tutti per uno...botte per tutti (Three Musketeers of the West) in 1973. With her naïve yet sexy looks she drew the attention of director Joe d'Amato, and began to take part in his erotic trash films, the most notable of which is Emanuelle - perchè violenza alle donne? (Emanuelle Around the World) (1977) where she plays Cora Norman, the counterpart of Laura Gemser.

In 1985, at the age of 40, she decided to appear in pornographic films and made a contract for a yearly income of 180,000 DM with the conditions that she won't appear in anal sex and bestiality scenes and won't perform with black partners (in 1983, she had appeared in the film Black Venus by Claude Mulot as Marie, a lesbian lover of the film's star Josephine Jacqueline Jones, Miss Bahamas 1979). She made her debut with Morbosamente vostra where she once again found herself playing a character called Cora, this time a schizophrenic housewife. This film is of particular significance since one can easily observe Schubert's effort to set higher standards of dramaturgy for pornography. Following several Italian porn titles, she bolstered her position as a porn star and in 1990, she starred in a three-film series called Wiener Glut also named Schubertgasse-Sex after her

Review: After a near-fatal crash in his World War I biplane, Baron Kurt von Sepper (Richard Burton) emerged with a curious condition. Some kind of chemical reaction to the accident caused his beard to turn blue, but was that the only effect it had had? Returning to life on his estate in Austria, he was much married, and his latest wife was Greta (Karin Schubert) who he had met at a ball where his pet cat, which had belonged to his mother, scratched her. In spite of this, they stayed together two years until Greta was killed in a hunting accident... or was it an accident?

If you know the story of Bluebeard then you'll be extremely sceptical over the claim that the Baron shot his wife in error, and of course you would be right, which is the main problem with this European co-production: there's no suspense, which is a drawback in a thriller. Even if you're not familiar with the old tale, there are very few surprises, so how about we treat this version as a comedy? Bit of a problem there, too, as nothing here is all that funny, in spite of a tone that verges on the spoofy. It could have been a neat horror parody, but it's not scary either.

So what is it? As it draws on, it seems to be an excuse to get these international stars together and the script, by Ennio de Concini, Maria Pia Fusco and co-director Edward Dmytryk (a once respected filmmaker in apparently reduced circumstances), doesn't offer them much more than guest bits. Only Burton gets anything close to a lead role, although Joey Heatherton as wife number seven is the female lead, but after she has uncovered the bodies in a room-sized freezer (actually unconvincing dummies) she doesn't get much to do except goad the Baron into telling her the background plot.

After a while this can get repetitive, with one wife, Virna Lisi, punished for her inability to stop singing, but ignored is the fact that the Baron was also frustrated that he could not get close to her amorously due to her trilling when the whole point of his being a murderer is to avoid any sexual contact with his wives. Making more sense is when he kills another spouse when she (Nathalie Delon) is taking lessons in love from a prostitute (Sybil Danning) and they end up getting carried away while he spies on them: he impales them both with a large ornamental horn for this in a none-too-subtle example of phallic imagery.

Probably the biggest star out of the actresses is Raquel Welch, and she, like Lisi, is one of only two of the wives not to grace us with a topless scene, playing a nun who takes the Baron's fancy until he realises her salacious past before she was a holy woman which she cannot stop going on about. Each of the ladies is dispatched in a different way, but none are stunningly imaginative and Burton's constipated performance does not lend itself to extravagant villainy anyway. Even his beard looks more black under the studio lights. So what you're left with is a film which toys with various ideas such as anti-fascism where the Baron is a committed Nazi, but you could easily take out the ten minutes of sequences where this is important and not notice. Some viewers might be attracted by the nudity, but even the sexual angle isn't given much space; in the end Bluebeard is a little fuss about not very much, a missed opportunity, but for what is unclear. Music by Ennio Morricone.
Reviewer: Graeme Clark
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Black Emanuelle I Bless The Rains Down In Africa
Year: 1975
Director: Bitto Albertini
Stars: Laura Gemser, Karin Schubert, Angelo Infanti, Isabelle Marchall, Gabriele Tinti, Don Powell, Venantino Venantini
Genre: Drama, Sex, Trash
Review: Mae Jordan (Laura Gemser), a photographer from Europe known as Emanuelle to her readers, is on an aeroplane journey to Nairobi for an assignment there when her daydreaming is interrupted by a couple getting amorous across the aisle. Having mixed feelings about this, she gets up to ask the stewardess something when she falls into conversation with one of the other passengers who tells her that he is going to Africa to become a missionary. Emanuelle is shocked that such a handsome young chap should be throwing his life away like that, but is her way of life any better?

Emanuelle is a decadent sort, you see, sleeping her way through the idle rich both male and female, much like the lead character of another film. That would be Emmanuelle, then, but please note that director and co-writer Bitto Albertini got around any copyright problems by removing a letter "M" from his protagonist's name. So completely different then? Not really, as this film, the first in a series to make Gemser a sexploitation star, was pretty slavish in its imitation of the French moneyspinner which starred Sylvia Kristel (Gemser had appeared with her in Emmanuelle 2 the same year as this).

So what you get for your attention is a series of couplings with our heroine at the centre of them, all amidst some attractive, travelogue-style scenery to add that touch of class. And in truth, it could have been sleazier (some versions include hardcore inserts) yet it's not exactly wholesome for all that, with Emanuelle's lame excuses for her promiscuous behaviour dressed up as a philosophy that will convince nobody. Nobody that cannot admit they're watching this simply to see some naked flesh, at any rate, and that is the purpose here.

Certainly Black Emanuelle (Gemser is actually Indonesian) delivers on that promise, but it does grow monotonous after a while, with the title character apparently never meeting a man she did not like, honestly, you can get quite ill thinking about the relentlessness of her sexual exploits - including an entire men's hockey team. We meet the wealthy types she will be getting together with at a party sequence near the beginning, which predictably ends with almost everyone jumping into the pool, but does allow Emanuelle an opportunity to get to know the husband of her hostess better.

He is Gianni (Angelo Infanti) and there is an attraction there you will not be shocked to learn, but Emanuelle does not wish to engage with him just anywhere - no, the situation must be right. Or it is at first, for after about half an hour she is sleeping with a man who picked her up hitchhiking, simply to spite Gianni who she overhears on the telephone calling her a tramp. Mind you, he might have had a point, yet the composure of Gemser allows us to believe we're watching something with a bit of quality rather than the semi-porno cash-in that it really is. For many, she is the reason to sit through the increasingly tawdry Black Emanuelle instalments, and if you like films where the female lead's catchphrase might as well be "Oops, all my clothes have fallen off!" then this is worth a look. Music by Nico Fidenco.
Reviewer: Graeme Clark

Review: At a staging of an avant garde thriller play in a London theatre, Italian Anna (Giovanna Ralli) is sitting barely tolerating the banter of a drunk Englishman who obviously believes he has a very good chance of taking her home tonight. But she has no intention of that occuring, so when another, suaver Englishman, the wealthy son of a judge Peter Flower (Gianni Garko) catches her eye she welcomes him coming to interrupt and pretend to spill his drink on her to offer the excuse she needs to get away. They then spend some of the evening seeing the sights of the Big Smoke, but Peter wishes to get Anna back to his house, which she should not have done...

Cold Eyes of Fear starts with a cheat, as it comes on like a typical giallo where you see a young woman (Karin Schubert) menaced by a knife-wielding mystery man, and as he cuts off her underwear and starts to make love to her all the signs are that this is yet another woman in peril. There is a woman in peril in this, but she's not played by Karin, as it turns out this is simply a play we're seeing which the audience apparently think is great hearing how much applause they offer. You may beg to differ, especially when it turns out the rest what you're watching could also have passed muster as a play seeing as much of it takes place on a single set.

That set being the house of Peter, who thinks he's onto a good thing with Anna although he is overenthusiastic about getting amorous with her and she keeps wriggling out of his clutches. However, they are not alone in the place as they quickly discover when Peter's butler shows up only to collapse dead in front of them and they can't help but notice there's a man with a gun over there. He tells them they've got to beware in no uncertain terms, but what he actually wants is not given away by the film too early, which is just as well because once you have all this worked out it does comes across as less than the sum of its parts.

So Peter and Anna become hostages to Quill (Julián Mateos), and Peter's father (Fernando Rey) turns out to be the key to all of this. He spends practically the whole film in another location, his office, although he does have an excuse in that the adversary has booby trapped it. This being an Enzo G. Castellari movie, you can fully expect an explosion to go off at some stage, although he manages to make this as much a cheat as the giallo-except-it-isn't opening five minutes. What is really on the director's mind, then, if it's not serial killers and whatnot? It's actually police corruption, a big news story in Italy at the time, and to an extent in the United Kingdom as well.

But you get the impression that Castellari was transposing the corruption of Italy's lawbreaking lawmen with those of Britain, almost as if he didn't have the courage to depict his homeland in such unflattering terms. On one beneficial hand, this does mean some neat location shots of London in the early seventies with all the atmosphere that implies, but on the other that tends to be deflated by the fact that the rest was filmed on Cinecitta sound stages. After a while Frank Wolff (this film was released the year of his tragic suicide) shows up as a policeman who might offer Peter and Anna a way out of their predicament - or not, as the case may be - and it all gets bogged down in acres of talk that grow harder and harder to care about the longer it goes on. There may have been a serious point to be made here, but this is average at best in its execution. Jazz freakout music by Ennio Morricone.

Review: Revolutionary Mexico is the place and in an out of the way town that has recently seen some alarm, two men stand by the railway tracks and face each other, hands by their pistols and a religious statue the main bone of contention. But there is more to their relationship than that, and as the man known as The Swede (Franco Nero) ponders his next move opposite the man known as El Vasco (Tomas Milian), he reminisces about the first time they ever encountered each other. They would come to be friends, but where there was money and violence involved, could one really trust the other?

And principles, don't forget principles as these two characters seem to be living on their wits to make as much out of life as they can, but the political climate might force them to consider the bigger picture for a change. For many fans, this is their favourite western from Sergio Corbucci, even above Django, and there's a definite sense of humour here that lifts it above the usual fare of the genre. In its way this was a follow up to the lesser seen The Mercenary, featuring much of the same cast and crew, and running on similar lines.

But it's that wry atmosphere that makes this something of a romp through the clichés of the buddy movie as seen through the filter of the spaghetti western. Stars Nero and Milian are at their most charismatic here and make a great double act, tolerating each other, outwitting their counterpart and providing much of the enjoyment with their banter. When they first meet, El Vasco is a revolutionary leader, having somewhat fallen into the role, but something of a buffoon, a point not lost on the cool and together Swede who gives him a dollar, telling him he just won a bet - it will take the rest of the film for El Vasco to wheedle out of his new companion the reason why.

But maybe The Swede is not as collected as he would like us to think; he can certainly handle himself in a fist fight or with a gun, and is wily enough to extricate himself from most situations, but does need a hand every once in a while when, say, he ends up tied up, standing on an unsteady barrel with a noose around his neck. There are a few villains here, painted more despicably than the likeable heroes, including some Americans looking to secure the oil rights to Mexico's land and some dodgy generals who are exploiting the population for their own power games, but the bad guy you'll remember is John, also known as Wooden Hand.

Why is he known as Wooden Hand? Um, because he has a wooden hand, and he's played by Jack Palance at the height of his "let's have some fun with this" eccentricities. With his eyes permanently screwed up and accent veering off in wild directions, he roams the landscape searching for our two protagonists who have freed peace-loving Communist Professor Xantos (Fernando Rey) from an upcoming execution - also on Wooden Hand's hitlist. And let's mention the man in black's pet, a falcon he describes as his only friend which searches out his quarry and gets fed bits of them should they be caught. Corbucci's film, for which he contributed the story as well as co-writing the script, is rich with memorable scenes and engrossing adventure, and if it has a fault it's that it's too keen to get silly. Still, it has an interesting take on the levels of power and the action is impeccable, as is Ennio Morricone's score; watch out for Nero striking a match with someone's nose, too.
Reviewer: Graeme Clark

Review: How’s that for a come-hither title? For Euro-horror fans, Edwige Fenech will always be queen of the giallo, but she was also queen of the Italian sex comedy. This saucy, medieval romp is but one of many that followed in the wake of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Decameron (1971) and Canterbury Tales (1972). Whereas Pasolini taps the bawdy satire of Boccaccio and Chaucer in a way that tickles both the raincoat brigade and art-house crowds, movies like Ubalda, All Naked and Warm are closer in tone to a Frankie Howard vehicle, with the raunchiness cranked up to eleven.

Olimpio (Pippo Franco), a bumbling knight home from the crusades, is eager to resume carnal relations with his lovely wife, Fiamma (Karin Schubert), whose virtue has been protected by padlocked, cast-iron panties. Little does he know, his wife stole the key long ago and has lovers hidden about the house, in cupboards, barrels and under the bed. Not over-eager to share herself with the oaf who left her shackled alone and went off chasing fortune and glory, Fiamma concocts a phoney religious vow and makes him wait. But feckless Olimpio is already enamoured with the village bombshell, Ubalda (Edwige Fenech), whose beauty drives every man nearby into a sexual frenzy, much to the annoyance of her brutish husband, Oderisi the Miller (Umberto D’Orsi). Away from his prying eyes, Ubalda unlocks her iron chastity belt for several young studs, a lusty monk (Pino Ferrara), and an elderly apothecary (?!). Olimpio figures he’s in with a shot and concocts an array of hapless schemes to bed her.

Ubalda, All Naked and Warm’s sole raison d’etre is to get doe-eyed, voluptuous Edwige naked as many times as the plot will allow. That’s a whole lot of naked, with set-pieces ranging from nude modelling, numerous love scenes, threesomes, bathing, and a lengthy dream sequence with Ubalda running naked through the fields in boob-bouncing slow-mo. Wow. Thankfully, Fenech didn’t become a star through gorgeous looks alone. Producer/co-screenwriter Luciano Martino (brother of Fenech’s regular director Sergio Martino and her lover at the time) tailors the film to showcase her winning combination of innocence, charisma and fine sense of comic timing. He doubles our pleasure by including blonde sexpot, Karin Schubert - who sadly descended into hardcore misery in the 1980s.

Things are a lot duller when these two aren’t onscreen. Olimpio and Oderisi, forever slapping each other around in sub-Laurel and Hardy fashion, prove especially tedious, although Pippo Franco (who scored a supporting role in Billy Wilder’s Avanti! (1972)) is funnier when camping it up as a fey artist (“Fab-u-lous!”). The male characters are all neurotic twerps who treat women like cattle (“Wives and oxen belong at home”, grunts Oderisi), and are either sexually dysfunctional (Oderisi refuses to make love to Ubalda, but quite fancies Olimpio’s wife), or hypocritical (Olimpio is introduced trying to ravish a virgin, but rails at Ubalda for being a “wanton hussy”), which puts our sympathies with the heroines despite their gross infidelity. The oddly macabre ending gives the misogynist males more or less what they deserve.

No Shame’s region 1 DVD includes trailers, “Edwige Fenech’s Groovy Sexadelic Reel” (basically, all her nude scenes from the movie scrunched into three minutes with fancy optical effects and sitar music. Surprisingly compelling.), plus a warm interview with the beloved cult film star herself, who still looks amazing. If you’re after a quality film starring Edwige Fenech try All the Colours of the Dark (1972). If you want a shameless excuse to drool, try this.
Reviewer: Andrew Pragasam